Creating a standard percentage pool

Servers tip out 3% to the bar. Servers pool together and split by hours.

This is how most restaurants run tips, and it's what you want unless everybody genuinely shares one pot — that's Creating a Whole House tip pool.

New to tip pools? Read §1 of the main guide first — it explains "gives" and "receives" in two minutes.

Contents

1. Pools and tip-outs
2. The setup
3. Writing a row
4. Tips or sales — the choice that matters most
5. Scoping a row to part of the check
6. When a row has nobody to pay
7. Worked examples
8. Check it before payroll
9. Troubleshooting

1. Pools and tip-outs

Two different things, and a percentage pool can hold both.

A pool — a job shares with itself:

All the servers put their tips together and split them by hours.

Everyone on that job contributes, and everyone on that job — including whoever rang the check — takes a share back. In NX that's a row where the giving job and the receiving job are the same. It shows a 🔄 pool badge.

A tip-out — one job gives to another:

Servers give 3% to the bartenders.

The money leaves for a different job. The server gets none of it back.

Most restaurants use both, in one pool. See §7.

The rule that surprises people

A row can only pay somebody who was on the clock.

If nobody is clocked into the receiving job when a check closes, that row pays nothing and the money stays with whoever earned it. Correct — there was nobody to pay — but it's the number one reason someone says "the tip pool isn't working". NX flags it before payroll.

2. The setup

1. Tip Pools → New pool
2. Name it — name the daypart if you run more than one ("PM Tip Pool")
3. Pool type: Percentage
4. Pot size: One pot a day
5. Split method: By hours worked
6. Time window: leave empty unless this pool is for one daypart
7. Add your rows (§3)
8. Save

The settings, briefly

"By hours worked" means hours in the pot — the whole shift on a daily pot. Not the time somebody was on the floor for that particular check.

3. Writing a row

Each row is a sentence:

Server gives 3 % of Tips to Bartender → Server gives 3% of tips to Bartender

• Gives — the job the check was rung under. Not somebody's usual job: a person working Bartender on Friday and Server on Saturday counts as a different job each day.
• Receives — where the money goes.

Making a pool instead of a tip-out

Set the receiving job to the same job:

Server gives 100 % of Tips to Server → Every Server pools 100% of tips and shares it between them

The 🔄 pool badge appears. 100 % here is normal — the whole tip goes into the servers' shared pot and comes back out split by hours.

Percentages

Type them as percentages — 3 means 3%. Two decimal places if you need them.

Order matters, sometimes

Rows are applied top to bottom. It only matters if a job's rows total more than 100% of the tips, in which case later rows get whatever is left. NX warns you when a job's rows exceed 100%.

Minimum and maximum (rarely needed)

Behind the ⚙ gear, per check. Most pools never touch these. If you set one, NX asks you to confirm — the behaviour was corrected on 2026-07-30, so an old setting may not mean what it says.

4. Tips or sales — the choice that matters most

Every row is a percentage of one of these:

Percent of tips is simple and self-limiting: 3% of tips is 3% of whatever the guest left.

Percent of sales is the industry norm for tipping out support staff, because it's fair to the supported staff regardless of how well any one guest tipped.

How to tell which one you already run

Look at last month's numbers per server:

• Every server tipped out the identical percentage → you're on percent of tips
• Servers tipped out different percentages (16.6%, 21.4%, 32.3%) → you're on percent of sales

A percent-of-tips rule gives everyone the same percentage by construction. Variation means sales.

One thing to know about sales-based rows

A sales-based tip-out isn't limited by what the guest actually tipped, so a single stiffed check can owe more than it collected. NX caps each person's total pay-out at the tips they took in across the shift, rather than check by check — so a generous check absorbs a stiffed one. That's the same netting other POS systems use, and it's why the row shows a note about shift netting.

A sales-based tip-out above 10% of sales gets a warning. Typical is 1–5% per receiving job.

5. Scoping a row to part of the check

A sales-based row can be limited to certain sales categories:

Server gives 3 % of Net sales in Food to Food Runner → Server gives 3% of net sales in Food to Food Runner

So the runner's cut comes off food only, and the bar's cut off drinks only. Leave the scope empty and it applies to the whole check — the placeholder says so.

6. When a row has nobody to pay

Worth understanding before you build a pool with several tip-outs, because the default behaviour costs money quietly.

A row whose receiving job has nobody clocked in pays nothing — and its share is not given back.

Say servers tip out 25 % of tips to the barback and keep the rest. On a night with no barback:

It isn't lost from the business — it stays attributed to whoever rang the check — but it never reaches anybody through the pool, and nothing on the screen shouts about it. If the ringing job is an unattended account (a service bar, say), that money effectively goes nowhere.

The fix: pay the remainder to somebody

Open a row's ⚙ gear and tick:

☑ Pay this row whatever the other rows don't distribute

That row then reads:

Whatever the other rows don't pay out goes to Bartender

It's paid last, after every other row on the check has been settled, and it collects anything they couldn't hand out. It has no percentage — the number field disappears, because its amount is whatever is left.

With that row in place, the same night:

Rules

• One row per pool. NX blocks a second — it would take what's left after the first, which is never what anyone means.
• Percentage pools only. A points pool already divides the whole tip, so there is no remainder.
• It's a backstop, not magic. If the remainder row's own job has nobody clocked in either, the money still goes nowhere. Point it at the job most reliably on the floor.
• It doesn't take anything from the other rows — they're paid first, in full, exactly as written.

7. Worked examples

"All our servers pool their tips and split by hours"

1. Percentage, One pot a day, By hours worked
2. Row: Server → Server, 100 % of Tips

"Servers tip out the bar and the runners"

1. Row: Server gives 5 % of Tips to Bartender
2. Row: Server gives 3 % of Tips to Food Runner

"Our servers pool together AND tip out the bar"

Both in one pool:

1. Row: Server → Server, 100 % of Tips (the pool)
2. Row: Server gives 5 % of Tips to Bartender (the tip-out)

"Servers tip out a percentage of their sales"

1. Row: Server gives 3 % of Net sales in Food to Food Runner
2. Row: Server gives 2 % of Net sales in Beer, Liquor, Wine to Bartender

"The service bar passes everything to whoever's behind the bar"

Service-bar accounts usually sit on their own job:

1. Row: Unpaid Bartender gives 100 % of Tips to Bartender

100 % is a pass-through, not a mistake.

"Whatever the barback doesn't take should go to the bartender"

1. Row: Server gives 25 % of Tips to Barback
2. Row: Server gives 2 % of Tips to Food Runner
3. Row: Server → Bartender, ⚙ → ☑ Pay this row whatever the other rows don't distribute

On a full crew the bartender takes 73%. On a night with no barback they take 98%, and nothing is left unpaid. See §6.

"Lunch and dinner pool separately"

Two pools, not one:

1. AM pool: One pot a daypart, window "Tip Pool - AM"
2. PM pool: same, with the PM window

Check the windows don't overlap. If they do and the same job contributes to both, that job tips out twice. NX warns you.

8. Check it before payroll

The status light

The dry run

Preview tab → a recent busy business date → run. Nothing is saved, no money moves.

• Per-employee net — what payroll would adjust by
• Total distributed vs tips collected
• Per-job reality check — a job with no active employees can't receive

0 distributed with 0 tips collected just means a quiet day. 0 distributed with tips collected is the real red flag, and the reality check says why.

9. Troubleshooting

A row pays nobody

Nobody was clocked into the receiving job when those checks closed. Check the job is one people actually clock into — a job that exists in name only is the classic cause.

And check where its share went. By default it goes to nobody — see §6. If that job is often unfilled, add a remainder row.

The dry run distributes less than the tips collected

Some row couldn't pay. Compare total distributed against tips collected on the same date; the per-job reality check shows which job was empty. A remainder row closes the gap (§6).

🔴 Inert

Track only is selected, there are no rows, every row has an error, or no row has people on both ends.

The tip-out is far too big

Check whether the row says Tips or Net sales. 20% of sales is a very different number from 20% of tips, and swapping them is the most expensive mistake on this page.

The numbers are 100× off

Check the percentage field: 3 means 3%. Reopen the pool — it reads back what was saved.

A server's rows total over 100%

NX warns you. Later rows only receive what's left, so the last row on the list quietly gets less than it says. Reduce the rates, or reorder so the important row is first.

Somebody is tipping out twice

Two pools with overlapping time windows and the same contributing job. Both fire. NX warns you when it can see it.

Getting help

If the dry run hasn't told you why, send NX support:

• the pool name and your venue
• the business date you're looking at
• what you expected and what happened

The dry run output for that date is the most useful thing to include.